


earthly chains

by basketweaver



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angel bitty, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-08-12 18:50:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7945342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basketweaver/pseuds/basketweaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So he blames tufts of feathers on pillows, even though he’s got one of those foam ones from Ikea. He laughs off the way he inexplicably enchants babies and toddlers, you know, because some people just have a way with kids.</p>
<p>or: bitty is an angel who has lots of feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. body

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd. and written within the span of about 5 hours. forgive me.
> 
> set in the spring of freshman year.
> 
> title from Darlings by Susanne Sundfør (whose album i listened to on repeat while writing this. i recommend a listen while reading too).
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Maybe it’s a little unfair. There are no rules concerning former angels on Earth, and there are, sure as anything, no rules concerning former angels in college hockey. Sometimes he uses certain abilities in certain situations, when he needs a little extra help. Eric doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do, if there were rules he would follow them. He navigates according to his best guess. He weighs pros and cons, good and bad, on his internal scales of morality.

It’s just a little assistance when he needs it. In all honesty it’s hard for him to control. It’s tough adjusting to life on Earth. With humans. They’re really quite _small_ , for lack of a better word, and… he understands them, but he doesn’t really get them all the time. He does his best. Oh, God knows he does his best.

So he blames tufts of feathers on pillows, even though he’s got one of those foam ones from Ikea. He laughs off the way he inexplicably enchants babies and toddlers, you know, because some people just have a way with kids. People wonder how he can be so nice all the time. Well, that’s just good manners. There’s nothing holy about that.

On the ice is where Eric feels so at home, where the air is colder and feels cleaner, where he imagines he’s flying. That feeling alone used to be it’s own motivation; when he was figure skating, at least. But in the heat of a hockey game, there’s more on the table. The pressure of teammates and their feelings; the feelings of those he’s grown to care about. The numbers start to mean something. He likes the hugs and smiles of goals, tries not to burn through his equipment onto teammates’ skin, but his face is glowing, burning red with joy. He _feels_ everything so viscerally.

 

But when the burning moves from his gut to his chest, like he’ll burst, he doesn’t know what to do. He knows how to control himself - he tenses the muscles of his abdomen, clenches his fists and bites his lip. But when he’s trying to keep his ribcage from cracking open? When he’s trying to keep his _heart_ from igniting and his back from breaking? He can’t simply grit his teeth when his blood is boiling.

 

“Bittle?”

Eric turns away from the kitchen counter with smoking fingertips, shaking them out like matches. He smiles, involuntarily like a sigh, “yes, Jack?”

“I, um. Are you coming to the bar with the team tonight?” Jack’s standing about a step past the threshold of the kitchen, hands in his pockets. He’s looking anywhere but Eric’s eyes.

“Of course, you know I wouldn’t miss it!”

Jack doesn’t reply, just stands there.

Eric fills the silence, “I’ll see you there, then.”

“Yeah.” Jack turns a sharp 180-degrees, never one to linger.

Eric can’t understand what he can do when Jack acts like this. He gets nicknames (signs of familiarity and affection), he’s getting better at facial expressions (there’s just so much variation), but Jack is like a brick wall to him. Stoic and not at all forgiving.

 

Eric goes to sleep that night, late, after an easy evening spent sitting on green sofas and cooling his spirit with ice-cube filled glasses. Dreaming is like shining a flashlight through the tissue of his hand, seeing bones and capillaries glow pink. Light fights to radiate from within but only succeeds translucently. When Eric dreams, the extremities of his body glow like that. He never remembers the dreams he has about his existence before; he’s too fragile now to process those visions.

However, he’s never managed to singe his sheets in sleep before. He wakes up at five in the morning, with sweat on his forehead and his duvet thrown to the floor. Everything sticks to him, hot. There’s one name lingering on his lips. He remembers this. He remembers black hair and icy blue eyes. He remembers being paralysed. He removes the sheets and swiftly pads with bare feet over wooden floorboards to the bathroom.

He sings in the shower usually, the water and the tiles allowing for just a little of his voice to ring free. It’s mostly glossolalia, when he needs to let out some tension. But when he chooses to properly sing it’s beautiful, flowing, it sounds like organs playing. It sounds like congregations, and harps. He chooses not to sing this morning, at five am, out of courtesy. He quietly bathes, recounts.

Eric opens the curtains as the stars are disappearing and the sun brings the dawn. Birds chirp and croon. He breathes in, breathes out, feels peace.

 

They lost in the playoffs, after Bitty got checked and got a concussion. Being cast into the air by the check, maybe he floated half a second too long. It’s not as if it helped dull the impact any, though. His human body can do many things, but he’s not even a fraction of what he was before. He felt weak in that moment. He felt like… a disappointment. But something changed then too. Something between him and Jack.

 

Jack is going to be captain again next year (of course). Eric can’t fully believe Jack's modesty, holds tight onto his own award to ground himself during Jack’s speech. He falls in love with him constantly, second after second, over and over again.

 

When he has an unexpected conversation with Jack while packing up at the Haus, Eric feels his collarbones snap and his lungs puncture. He’s happy and nervous and unprepared, but plays it cool and leans on walls, laughs. He’s burned through three more bed sheets since the first night after the bar. Recently, he’s been waking up feeling hotter every morning. He dreams every single night of broad shoulders and high cheekbones. And summer temperatures certainly aren’t helping.

Jack looks back at him, leaving with a quip and a smile, leaving Eric crossing his arms to keep his body together. He retorts smoothly, but when Jack is safely out of the way, he sees his palms and the veins on his wrists are gold, luminescent like embers. This summer will probably be a tough one.


	2. mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric thinks about how Jack looks pretty behind the flames. He has a pretty flush across his skin, knelt on the ice, in a prayer position. He feels his cheeks flare up, like they usually do after looking at Jack for too long.
> 
> or: Jack is really pretty and Bitty has to deal with how that makes him feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd. set in the fall of sophomore year.
> 
> the song that's mentioned is I Want Wind To Blow by The Microphones. 
> 
> enjoy

His tears spill onto his skin, rolling down his hot cheeks and evaporating off of him. His body is radiating and his whole face feels red, like it’s burning. He’s shaking almost invisibly, but he’s given away by the door he’s leaning on, that’s rattling in its frame. He hears it move, all the parts of it. The handle, the hinges, every screw. They all knock around in his ears and bang on his ear drums. He suddenly feels so disconnected from himself.

The familiar feeling was already bubbling up in his belly when he made his way to the bench. His temperature crept higher and higher every moment he sat there. He practically crumpled in on himself when he got into the office. His knees knocked on the desk in front of him, and he held himself together with his hands wrapped around his body as the coaches spoke to him. Now he holds his head in his hands, remembering and focusing on his physical form, his self, his humanity. It’s like the feeling, the one he’s been trying to gather up for so long, was suddenly slipping between his fingers. It always felt like bundling an endless ribbon, trying to collect himself and ground himself every day. And after all this time and work, each excruciating inch of the ribbon he’d gathered, it was all sliding away from him at once.

So he starts at the beginning again. He looks at the sky to try and calm himself, he sees the red setting sun has spilled, painting all the clouds around it in various shades of purple and blue. The farther off clouds are mostly grey, but there are the lucky ones that caught some of the sunlight, that are tinged pink. Eric’s reminded about before, all the different angles he could see the sunset from. He could watch it several times a day if he wanted to, following it around the earth.

He wipes the scalding tears away from his eyes. He doesn't know how long he's been there, but the sun has almost disappeared. He thinks maybe he appreciates this more, now that he only gets to see it once a day. 

 

Eric takes a nap one afternoon, a few days later, with the curtains open and the lights off. It’s not dark out yet, but the vibrant colours of the sunset are long gone, leaving his room is bathed in pallid grey tones. He’s puts on music, something Holster recommended to him, but he doesn’t really end up listening to it because he falls immediately, diving deeply, to sleep. He dreams of something, or someone.

His head is gently stirred awake by dizzying, prolonged vocals and the light from his glowing palms. He rubs his eyes, hearing spiralling, echoing acoustic guitar and incessant drum beats from his phone on the nightstand. The light is watery and streams in through his windows. His hands are still shining, only just, so Eric inspects them closely while he still can. They radiate a soft orange light, making his skin almost translucent, so he can just about see all his veins through it. It’s like light shining through water; the light from a flashlight that’s been dropped into a lake. He wonders what he dreamt about, watching their light slowly fade.

He kind of hurts from the hit, in the curve of his ribs. It’s a dull pain, which he notices it in his mind too. He’s been sleeping to escape it, escape his thoughts. They’re constant, like the throbbing between his shoulderblades, where his wings used to be. He misses their weight. He still feels slightly off-kilter without them. He tries not to think about them like this; explicitly, nostalgically. Trying to remember too much takes its toll on him after a while.

 

But keeping busy at the Haus isn’t hard. There’s always somebody around, somebody to talk to or bake for. He doesn’t always appreciate it (take Jack interrupting his shower, for example), but he can distract himself with frog problems, and college assignments too, of course. 

 

Hazeapalooza rolls around, which Eric fully invests himself in. Pies are baked and fires are lit. His pile of neatly folded sweaters and Tupperware are close at hand. The frogs, and Jack, are almost naked on the ice, and Eric thinks about how Jack looks pretty behind the flames. He has a pretty flush across his skin, knelt on the ice, in a prayer position. He feels his cheeks flare up, like they usually do after looking at Jack for too long. There’s a hot pressure on his sternum and tightness in his chest.

Earlier, Eric was thinking how well he was doing recently in handling his emotions, but it was all thrown out of the window as soon as Jack meets his eyes across the flaming cones. Seeing Jack smiling like this, the grin that’s been playing on his lips all night, leaves Eric feeling lighter. He feels like he’s hovering an inch above the ground, like nothing has really touched him the whole evening. He’s starting to feel butterflies again. 

 

Eric finds himself unable to sleep one night, which isn’t unfamiliar. He meets Jack unexpectedly in the kitchen, leaning on the counter.

“Hey,” he says, with a smile.

Jack looks up from his phone, smiles back, “what are you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m, uh, I’ve been having trouble sleeping recently,” Jack pauses, “Hockey stuff, you know?”

“Well, no wonder… you’ve got a lot on your plate right now.”

“Huh. Yeah,” Jack shrugs.

“Any closer on picking a team?” Eric asks, even though he’s sure Jack’s been asked the question a hundred times already that day.

“Still deciding,” Jack says, ever the stoic hockey player, “it’s tough, though.”

“It sure must be.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, me? I’m just getting myself a glass of water,” Eric says, as he follows through on his lie and gets a glass out of the cupboard. He hears Jack’s phone vibrate.

Jack is looking back at his phone again, typing something to somebody.

“Goodnight, Jack,” Eric says, wishing the conversation could have been something different, “make sure you get some sleep tonight, alright?”

“Yeah,” Jack chuckles, “goodnight, Bittle.” 

 

In his human body, Eric feels everything stronger. Just as he thinks he’s getting used to it, too. He has stopped noticing himself blinking for the most part (having only two eyes was limiting at first, but he got used to that as well). He’s still clumsy, and he still has some small difficulties with technology (he likes to use Twitter to remember everything, now his memory isn’t what it used to be). He gets fidgety. It always helps getting back on the ice and getting rid of some energy though, using his body. 

 

And he’s spending more time with Jack now, still on the ice rather than off of it. Eric thought maybe the butterflies would go away after a while, but they don’t.

Then Jack ends up in one of his classes. Or, actually, Eric ends up in one of Jack’s classes (give Southern charm to an angel and he can get anything he wants). Now they’re suddenly sitting next to each other in class for an hour every Thursday, and helping each other with assignments. The more time Eric spends with Jack, the more he becomes sure of the feelings he has towards him. It’s outgrowing crush status rapidly.

Eric is kind of realising that Jack is everything he wanted but nothing like what he expected. He’s discovered a cheeky, wry sense of humour, a little clumsiness that’s non-existent on the ice, and a tendency to become a real story-teller, if you let him be. Eric finds himself smiling more, and feels his heart becoming lighter. He’s still weighed down by the fact that his feelings are in no way reciprocated, but growing closer to Jack, no matter if it’s just as friends, is lifting Eric up in a way that no one else has. 

 

Before he knows it, the EpiKegster is right around the corner. Eric doesn’t really know what to expect from it, but he has no doubt that it’ll get wild.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something came over me a little while ago that made me want to write more angel!bitty, after almost a year since the last chapter. oops. i think the writing style might have changed a little bit since then? 
> 
> comments and criticisms welcome

**Author's Note:**

> seeing [this post](http://seraphbones.tumblr.com/post/142306246652/modern-fallen-angels-shivering-in-their-beds-at) and [this post](http://sweepcheck.tumblr.com/post/148509777009/cardamoms-anyway-smthn-ive-been-thinking-about) in quick succession led to a late-night/early-morning writing session. i mean fate was practically begging me. 
> 
> comments and criticisms welcome


End file.
